Colder Than Death Itself
by HVK
Summary: Terrible things lay below Ooo. Older than the kingdoms, older than Marceline, older than the Lich. Older than the world itself. The Fire Kingdom has dug too deep, and now nameless machines of death have brought it down, and only the Flame Princess is left to tell the horrors, that the Necrons hae come to Ooo.


After a few unpleasant reviews, I'm suddenly in the mood to post darkfic. And listening to HMKid's Necron song put me in a Necron mood!

Disclaimer: I don't own Warhammer 40k or Adventure Time, nor do I make profit off either property.

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In the back of her head, Flame Princess still heard the screams, rising higher and higher until the flames were snuffed out.

Under her feet, the lava was growing cold. Her Fire Kingdom, the land of her father and their ancestors unto the Founder himself, was _cooling_. The life in it, the fire of life, was dying-

Another crack, another scream cut short by a blast of green that shredded fire elemental into ashes. The ashes were still screaming until the wind blew them away.

A heavy metal foot, horrid metal that _lived_, kicked her in the stomach, and her bonds held her flames from roaring out as she fell on her sights, coughing up magma-thick clouds of ash. Snarling in impotent rage, she stared up, and up, and up still more, at the towering mechanical figure. It was like bones, a human skeleton several orders of magnitude larger, a living machine made to look so much like a human skeleton but somehow _wrong_, an alien monstrosity, like an embodiment of cruel Death made real…

The dead thing that walked stared at her for a time, it's immobile face nonetheless calculating, and she was struck by how different it seemed from the seemingly endless legions of soldiers that poured forth from those floating monoliths that had blasted down the castle of the Fire Kingdom in mere hours.

Green light, the light of a soul (however debased and cruel it was), shone from it like flame. But not any flame she knew or embodied; she remembered when Finn had whispered to her of nightmares and horrors, of a rotting dead thing that blazed with fire that did not burn but only corrupted and rotted.

Incredibly, it spoke, in a voice rimmed with mechanical hollowness so very different from all the robots or sapient machines she had ever met, like it was a mockery of the living machine. Perhaps what surprised her most was how polite it was.

The abomination said, "You dug too deep."

Flame Princess said nothing. Over it's arrogant tone, the Fire Kingdom still screamed, but they were getting quieter, the individual howls of fire elementals becoming clearer as more and more of them were cut down, and all their flames only made the monster's metal shells glow like embers, and nothing more.

"You awoke us from our long slumbers," the monster, perhaps some manner of lord, said reflectively. "…I remember when humans walked this world. When their Imperium stretched across the stars, and they went to war with all things that lived and walked."

It looked at her. It seemed to smile coldly.

"Perhaps," it said, gesturing the lava cooling with the deaths of over seventeen thousand fire elementals in less than three hours. Ashes blew, right into her mouth, and she spat frantically as she tasted Flambo. "We are doing humanity a favor. Wiping away the mutants and abberations they so despised."

She had seen Flambo die, moving to protect her only for one of the metal monsters to indifferent blasts him. She had heard him scream, the green fire peeling his heat away molecular layers at a time, and she had never heard anything scream like that. She had heard so many more screams like that, the metal monsters slaughtering all of her people without mercy or emotion. That cut most of all; they gave the deaths of the Fire Kingdom no more interest than stomping aside ants under the boot.

"…You are fierce, though burdened by the horrors of life," the Lord said, his green flames brightening a bit. "That will be useful."

Flame Princess roared at him. The bonds they had trapped her in constrained her flames from taking full effect or transmogrifying her into her true gigantic form and burning these horrors away.

She fell back, screaming impotently, and her fists slammed against the insides of the armored shell that had once housed her father. He had been among the first to die, the metal abominations pouring their weapons upon him and tearing him apart layer by layer, the smoke rising from him as he fell and screamed, and those screams had echoed for a full minute after he'd been extinguished.

Flame Princess moved against something gritty under her, and she recoiled in revulsion when she realized she was knee-deep in her father's ashes.

And then a metal claw grabbed her by the throat and dropped her to her feet. "Run," suggested the monster lord, as her bonds broke.

Flame Princess staggered up. "…Why…?" she asked, voice nearly silent.

"You will make a good messenger," the lord said, almost jovial. He spread his hands as his soldiers gunned down every last speck of flame they could find, ripping the lip from it (sometimes literally).

"…No. Why… why do this?"

The Lord nodded. "Ah. I see. You are distressed. You wonder why we have butchered your people, exterminated your kingdom, and leave solely you alone for it."

He leaned in. His eyes glowed brighter, and she recoiled at how _cold_ he was. "Because your kingdom was here. Because it is a dramatic expression. Because my soldiers are so tired from so long in slumber… but most of all, because you were there. Do not take it personal." He seemed to smile again. "The rest of this world will fall soon enough, and then you and all you love will know the blissed tranquility of death."

He whispered to her, and push her away. She ran, and ran, and didn't stop until she was back in the Grasslands gibbering in horror and never wishing so badly as she did now that Finn could hold her right.

The voice of the Lord echoed in her nightmares for years, and Bubblegum gasped in utter horror when Flame Princess dully repeated what he had whispered to her.

_"Tell them we have returned from aeons of sleep to resume our work, and harvest all that suffers the curse of the flesh and mortality. Tell them we shall liberate all from the pain of living._

_"Tell them the Necron have come."_


End file.
